Societal Intercourse

Come to that, I stepped down from positions of responsibility at another, too, and the conjunction of the two events got me thinking about historical societies generally, and their roles in the modern world. I think I’m reasonably well qualified to comment on this, and to explore the challenges that face such organisations at the present time: I’m currently a member of a dozen or so societies of various sorts and sizes (naval, maritime, Welsh, general historical, local history), have belonged to several of them for over 30 years, have chaired one for eight years, and served on the committees of, or held (or still hold) positions of responsibility at, several others. Every now and again, I have to have a purge, either of the countless journals, yearbooks, transactions and so forth that fill up one’s bookshelves at an alarming rate, or else of society commitments themselves, especially if the time spent going to meetings, on developing policies, or sometimes on ‘crisis management’, starts eating into more important aspects of life. Even so, I value the societies that I belong to, because without exception, they do really important work – perhaps by publishing rare sources or academic articles, by preserving aspects of national heritage, or by simply raising awareness of a particular aspect of the past.

In many cases, too, these societies were established, at least in part, as forums in which like-minded individuals could get together and exchange information and views. The problem for them in the twenty-first century is that this purpose has been largely usurped by social media, which is fast, flexible, and above all, free. In this respect, a well administered Facebook page, for example, can carry out pretty much the same function as many an amateur/volunteer-based society, but obtain a far wider reach almost literally overnight. Social media is also far more inclusive and democratic; after all, by definition, those who join societies are those who can afford to do so. Moreover, as far as the UK is concerned, those who attend meetings and events are often those who live in or near London, where the meetings and events in question are invariably held. This leads to the strong sense of déjà vu that I, for one, sometimes experience on such occasions: no matter which society is nominally responsible for holding it, one always runs into pretty much exactly the same people.

With thanks to zipdialog.com

Most of the societies I belong to, certainly the ones in which I’ve held positions of responsibility, obsess about their membership numbers. Several of them have experienced a long and steady decline, and although various initiatives sometimes slow this, the uncomfortable truth is that their membership demographic is often of ‘a certain age’. (In one society which I know of, the average age of the membership some years ago, when I was privy to the information, was 69…) Although generalisations are dangerous, there’s evidence that ‘the young’ often aren’t interested in joining such organisations; those who’ve grown up in the internet age expect to be able to access the specific resources they want, electronically and immediately, rather than taking on all the attendant (and expensive) baggage of society membership, including the stream of hard copies of journals or books which will swiftly fill the bijou studio cupboard in Camden which is all that a young early-career academic at the University of Finchley, for example, might just about be able to afford to rent. Now, it’s certainly possible to worry too much about this, and to obsess about a perceived need to appeal to ‘the young’: many people develop interests in history later in life, or think about joining societies when they’ve retired, so there will always be a body of potential recruits. However, the hard truth that societies need to face is that this is never, ever, going to be as large as it once was. Take the naval and maritime history societies: one of their biggest natural demographics, naval and merchant naval personnel, has been decimated over the last fifty or sixty years, and the increase in the numbers of those studying such subjects at university by no means compensates for that loss (not to mention the fact that, to put it crudely, PhD students tend to have rather less disposable income than rear-admirals).

The Bedfordshire Jacobite Association has a minor disagreement about the design of a new website

So unless they’re lucky enough to have substantial endowments bequeathed to them, many societies, particularly the smaller ones, are going to struggle. To counter this, they sometimes try to come up with ‘marketing strategies’. However, because they can’t afford to employ professionals, such schemes are usually dreamed up by rank amateurs, and implemented in inevitably amateurish ways; consequently, the results invariably provide proof of the old adage, ‘you get what you pay for’. Surely one way forward in this regard would be for various like-minded societies to pool resources to employ professionals in the fields of marketing, fundraising and online presence. Apropos of the latter, it should be a given in this day and age that even the smallest society needs to have a strong and dynamic ‘platform’ on the Web. Despite this, several societies that I belong to still have only the most basic of websites, and some still have no presence on social media at all. An argument which I’ve heard in at least one such body, along the lines of ‘most of our members are very old [see above] and don’t use the internet, so why should we have a website?’, is surely a textbook definition of the term ‘self-defeating’. The reliance on volunteers has other drawbacks, too. For example, willingness to fill a position of responsibility does not necessarily guarantee competence, and can also sometimes attract individuals who like garnering impressive-sounding titles rather more than attending to the workload that ought to accompany them, or else, perhaps, attract those with a propensity for ‘going rogue’ at the first opportunity. I’ve encountered all of these situations, in several different societies, over many years; like politics and the clergy, such institutions tend to attract all sorts and conditions, from the saintly and/or dynamic to the downright odd, via lumpen incompetents and the completely invisible.

(And since you ask, yes, I stick my hand up from the serried ranks of the downright odd.)

The Council of the Coracle Research Society completes its comfort break before discussing AOB

In a nutshell, then, societies that are forward-thinking, dynamic, and above all innovative – both in terms of the ‘package’ they offer to their members, and of the ways in which they raise money, rather than relying solely on subscription income – will undoubtedly survive for the foreseeable future. Those that still run themselves as amateurish nineteenth-century gentlemen’s clubs (and I do mean ‘gentlemen’s’, even if they have plenty of women members), sometimes operating with antiquated systems of governance that simply aren’t fit for purpose in the twenty-first century, and with a business model centred primarily on one product – say, the production of single annual volumes on a single theme, which might or might not be of interest to large swathes of the membership; ever more expensive black tie dinners; or collections of esoteric essays that are circulated only to the membership, not marketed more widely – are probably going to find it more and more of a struggle to survive. To put it another way, a mindset which proclaims ‘we’ve produced collections of essays about futtocks, and only collections of essays about futtocks, since 1769, and that’s the only thing we should attempt to do’, may charitably be termed the business model of the dodo.

***

Talking of dodos, it’s also undoubtedly the case that no organisation, or anything else come to that, has a divine right to continue to exist. Even the most cherished of institutions won’t necessarily last for ever: witness the cases of Woolworths, Punch magazine, the Holy Roman Empire, Spangles, properly maintained roads, Bruce Forsyth, and the Liberal Democrats.

(Note to stray visitors who might be unaccustomed to the normal tone of this blog: the last of those was what the non-rabid parts of the online human race, admittedly an ever-declining proportion, still refer to as ‘a joke’. Please do not respond with death threats.)

In terms of maritime history, one need only think of the fate of The American Neptune, the august journal that ceased publication in 2002, while in a recent post on this site, I referred to the sad closure in 2015 of the Danish Naval Museum, an institution that had existed in one form or another since the eighteenth century. In the UK within the last 20 years, we’ve witnessed inter alia the demise of the splendid Exeter Maritime Museum, the maritime museum in Caernarfon, and the historic warships collection at Birkenhead, while one hears ‘on the grapevine’ of threats to the existence of several other institutions, either through cuts to funding, a shortage of volunteers willing to keep them open, the intervention of avaricious developers eager to snap up prime waterfront sites, or the sad truth that they tend to be a long way from the standard ‘see Britengland in a day’ tourist route, i.e. London, Edinburgh, Stratford, Cambridge, Oxford, Hogwarts, Bicester Village. The same principle applies to societies, which, as noted earlier, also invariably depend upon volunteers; if subscription income no longer covers outgoings, or insufficient volunteers (who are, in any case, almost certainly poorly qualified to run modern, customer-facing organisations with online presences) come forward, then what are the long term prospects for such bodies?

I know that many will consider this blogpost to be a counsel of despair, and yes, perhaps it is – but only up to a point. For one thing, historical societies need to start thinking the unthinkable. The members of the Antediluvian Order of Admiral Byng Enthusiasts need to contemplate whether they should merge with the Lord Torrington Was Innocent League. The Maritime Memorials Club should consider ways of allowing students to ‘pick and mix’ from its resources, rather than insisting on them taking out a traditional, expensive, annual membership. And yes, the Dead Welsh Admirals Society really needs to consider whether it should wind itself up, and embark upon, say, a five year strategy of ‘extinction management’. It could even be called ‘Operation Dodo’.

***

Anyway, enough misuse of this blog as a ‘bully pulpit’. I’ll be away on holiday on the next couple of Mondays, and am not yet certain whether I’ll be posting new material, reblogging old posts, or sinking into cyber-silence (for which you’ll probably all be grateful). Either way, I’ll be back, as somebody once said!

Like this:

Related

7 Comments

Hmm…I believe I sense at least one target of your mildly barbed shafts ! I belong to a number of maritime history societies, one learn-ed indeed, but I don’t read some of their journals from cover to cover…..I am not terribly interested in the shape of a Greek Trireme’s rowlock ! Or futtocks ! Or which waistcoat Nelson wore on Tuesday’s ! But I am interested in the influence of sea power upon history, the influence which an individual has on historic naval events, and the events which shaped history and to understand those we need to observe and analyse those individuals and their characters. Which leads us to a number of the societies who live and breathe the lives of those individuals. These are, in the main, practising micro history and inevitably, in my view, as a consequence limit their membership to those who are fascinated by that process – and,indeed, who are of a certain age perhaps. I am one of them…and occasionally get stuck in, recently unearthing (not literally !) the grave of the Victory’s purser ‘in whose arms the immortal Nelson died’. Nothing wrong with that ! But……..history ? Well, yes and no. Because those who lament the absence of young vibrant history seekers in our midst need to look at how and what history is taught these days, how to enthuse that generation into the pursuit of historical knowledge and perspective, how to recognise that history repeats itself (especially in the political sphere !) and the lessons of today that can be learnt from the study of yesterday. This is sounding like a hobby horse….however, may I commend the T E Lawrence Society for the breadth of its membership, the scope of its researches, it’s Symposium held every other year over three days at St John’s College, Oxford – unmissable, especially if you want to unravel the enigma bound up in a mystery that was TEL, a mighty warrior and whose masterpiece, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, has never been out of print. Oh, and there’s dear old Nelson and his contemporaries, and some would suggest that Beatty and Jellicoe are worthy of a society or two (but history has not dealt with them so kindly – and Jellicoe knew a thing or two about strategy, Beatty not much about what was wrong with his ‘bloody ships today’). I guess the list is endless, not forgetting ‘Chinese’ Fisher whose letters make me chuckle, but forgive me, what’s it all really about…..Mahan with his ‘Influence of Sea Power upon History’, Marder with his masterly narrative and analysis in ‘From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow’ and Roskill’s ‘Naval Strategy between the Wars’ , Carolla Oman’s ‘Nelson’ and Bell’s multi volume ‘Pepys’ is my preferred fireside stuff – so, societies are fun to belong to, add interest but are not the real stuff of history………or are they ?

I would join them both, and attempt to stand between them ! Interesting, perhaps, that the same author has never written biographies of them both (or so I believe) . Either one or the other, but never the twain, it seems…………….and how can Beatty be forgiven by the Jellicoe camp for re-writing Jutland, until Harpur’s ‘Truth’ spilled the beans ! If Jellicoe had Beatty’s ‘dash’ and Beatty had Jellicoe’s strategic instinct, then the result would be Nelson resurgam ! But would German technical superiority have resulted in a score-draw in the face of heavier metal ? Discuss.

Is it possible we are going through a temporary membership “trough”? I keep reading articles about how most people will be under- or un-employed in the next 20 years as cheaper and more reliable machines take over our functions. The need to get out of the house, do something interesting, express yourself, interact with other in person, will still exist. Given a universal salary, people need gathering spaces and projects to entertain them. The more electronics take our lives global, the more the need to interact locally. The Millennials, who outnumber Boomers, are activists and idealists, like their grandparents. They respond to challenges.

The major underlying problem I find today is that young people respond to fantasy more than reality. At the movies yesterday during the trailers I was informed twice that “the universe is in peril, and only [the heroine] can save us”. Evidently Millennials are motivated to act by things out of the realm of any marketing proposal I can think up. “You must find and kill the giant squid in this 17th century Bristol wreck before it kills all the people in the lifeboat during the January 1607 hurricane. PROBLEM: we don’t know where the wreck is.”?

My recommendation is that organizations need to engage children so they feel things with their hands and eyes before their brains are completely seduced by the mobile phone. That means teaching them to scuba dive to that wreck before they are 10. By-pass the adults. They may follow their children.

As an ex-teacher, I couldn’t agree more! And you might be right; all this free time that’s allegedly coming humanity’s way might change things. But those sorts of predictions have been made before, and found wanting…

This is something that has been occupying my own mind recently. As leader of a Local History Group which lacks new members, I refuse to let it die on my watch. We have always met in the evening, so people who work can attend – they don’t. The more mature members don’t like coming out in the dark, so, from January, we are moving to an afternoon. We also intend to start a Facebook membership. We already have a website.
The Family History Group I belong to, took a couple of years to replace the chair – a successful campaign on my part to refuse the position! Our secretary stands down at the AGM, next month, without, so far, a replacement.
The answer, if things get worse, is, as you suggest, a merger. But then what? We end up sitting at home staring at our screens, never meeting or speaking to, anyone in real life?